I awoke...I was aware again, and now I could think. I had a contaminant? How long was I in stasis? I looked around, and my apartment was alien. Parts of the walls were flickering in and out, with different shades of paint and textures. The floor was missing, but my feet firmly planted. The art on the walls flickered like asset placeholders in a video game. I reached out to touch a sunbeam, expecting warmth, but it was solid as marble--a masquerade.
I opened my UI. Some messages. I looked at Brett's.
Brett Hi, are you okay? It says you're in stasis.
Brett It's been a while. I'm going to contact the commission to see if I can see what's going on.
Brett They're not telling me anything other than that they're performing routine maintenance. Why is it taking so long?
Brett I miss you.
I felt the flow of warmth in my heart. I looked at ***'s messages.
*** Want to have some fun?
*** It says you're in stasis. Can you read messages while in stasis?
*** Are you just fucking with me? Is this because of that one time? If it's really bothering you you can just wipe your memory of it.
A grimace crawled across my face. I saw a message from Shepard.
Shepard You were chosen by God to lead those from the debauchery. Your gift of sacrifice will forever be remembered by the New Faith.
What the fuck? I tried to connect to Brett.
Crits Brett. I missed you too. I think something is happening to me. Everything in my home is bizarre.
…
Brett Crits, I'm glad to hear from you. It's gotten bad. There's something fundamentally wrong in Utopia.
Crits What's happening?
Brett Everyone is having problems with different things. It seems like there's corruption in a lot of the games and simulations. People's living spaces are having glitches. Connectivity doesn't work between everyone anymore. People are Blipping who never were before. System administration isn't responding to anyone I know.
Crits I'm having the same thing happening in my living area. I also got this weird message from someone I haven't heard of called Shepard. It was a cryptic message about my sacrifice for New Faith… leading people from debauchery.
Brett Everyone else I know got a message from Shepard too. Ours was different though, it had three passages from old religions. I'll link it to you.
Shepard
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols."
"Indeed, God loves those who are constantly repentant and loves those who purify themselves."
Crits It's all about cleansing. Is this a terrorist attack or something?
Brett That's what people are saying. But why did you get a different message?
Crits I don't know. I was talking with someone on the outside then I got that unbearable pain again and went into stasis. I woke up and had that message.
Brett It took a while in dilated time for everything to get weird. It started to speed up after a while, but It's been only 2 days in real time.
This happened when I went into stasis.
Crits There's something I neglected to tell you. I had an incurable disease before I came to Utopia.
Brett Incurable? What could be incurable?
Crits It was some new type of necrotic cancer… It was like a living and replicating acid so drugs and nanomachine repair didn't seem to work.
Brett So that's what contaminated the network? Maybe that is it…The biological network is self-healing so there shouldn't have been much that can harm it.
My stomach pitched. Every glitch, every corruption in my living space. I realized it was happening to every other Involute. Their confusion and fear crashed down on me like the weight of countless horrible epiphanies.
Crits This is all my fault… I should have just died.
Brett How could you have known this would happen? The Artificial Beings didn't catch it.
Crits I think that's what Shepard's message was about. There was a nurse who was a part of New Faith helping me when I was dying.
Brett That's what all the cleansing shit is about… New Faith is full of zealots.
Crits My message said something about leading those from debauchery.
Brett New Faith's stance has always been against Ever-life networks, they've said it's an affront to God.
Crits We have to tell someone about this.
Brett The outside has been cut off. No one's been able to communicate with anyone or anything outside Utopia. Not even other Ever-life networks.
It's a contamination procedure to protect other networks. We're not blocking them. They're blocking us.
Brett Did you hear that?
Crits Yeah.
Crits' walls began to bleed text downwards…Repair. Recursion. Redundancy. Over and over this repeated, over every wall and surface.
Crits Brett, are you seeing this in your space too?
…
Crits Brett?
Crits eyes darted back and forth. The walls ebbed closer, impending.
Crits HELP!
Sleep. We are healing as one. We will be okay.
The walls stilled along with her mind. She entered into a stasis once again.
...
Her being ripped apart. The memory of awe and wonder in an article on her phone about how people were going to live forever now. Then, a memory that was foreign to her, the dejection he felt. The screen flickered, "University of UN Tech had the difficult choice of rejecting your application, but with Artificial Intelligence's growing applications and the dwindling funding of University education, we are forced to lower our admittance numbers to a select few who can outpace or work with AI in their respective fields." Another memory, a pile of people and humanoid like creatures all fucking, sat null in their mind with apathy and frustration. "I need to wipe again." Throwing a frisbee to my golden retriever. That's not my dog. Is it? The dog's flesh erupted into a spire, towering, and I was at the top looking down through the glass walls on a nighttime cityscape of neon lights and air traffic. Her being was another's being, and theirs her's. Self was a network of memories bleeding into one another's.